About Helen Moore

Helen Moore is an award-winning ecopoet and community artist/activist based in Somerset. Her debut collection, Hedge Fund, And Other Living Margins (Shearsman Books, 2012) was described by Alasdair Paterson in Stride Magazine as being “in the great tradition of visionary politics in British poetry.” Her second collection, ECOZOA, will be published by Permanent Publications in spring 2015.

Helen’s essays and reviewsalso appear in a range of international publications; and she has extensive experience in leading writing workshops within continuing education, schools and community arts programmes. This year she’s working as poet-in-residence with the Bristol Pound, a local currency designed to build resilience within the city’s local economy.

In developing a new artistic sensibility in response to ecocide, Helen has explored other art forms too. In 2011 she directed the Web of Life Community Art Project toraise awareness of mass extinction. ‘Greenspin’, a video-poem made with film-maker Howard Vause, exposes the language of corporate advertising and ‘greenwashing’, and won 3rd prize in the Liberated Words International Poetry Film Festival in 2013.

Articles with Helen Moore

Helen Moore’s award-winning poem records the mock ecocide trial held at London’s Supreme Court in 2011. The project was initiated by Polly Higgins, an environmental lawyer, barrister and author, as part of the Eradicating Ecocide campaign to make ecocide the fifth international Crime against Peace.

Art activism by Liberate Tate references the growing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, measured in parts per million (ppm). Steadily increasing since the onset of the industrial revolution, levels now exceed what scientists consider to be a maximum ‘safe’ limit of 350 ppm. This piece also critiques the role of oil companies in contributing to this, and their sponsorship of the arts.

The V&A’s ‘Disobedient Objects’ exhibition focused on the period from the late 1970s to the present day, a time that has brought new technologies and political challenges. On display were arts of rebellion from around the world that illuminate the role of making in grassroots movements for social change. Award-winning ecopoet, Helen Moore, reviews the exhibition.

The two theatre companies I’ve dialogued with for this piece generally work outdoors, occupying non-theatre spaces that can sometimes bring people into unexpected contact with their work. Being outside brings connection with the elements too, as audience members standing at The Globe Theatre will know. But it also encourages theatre that engages with nature, the […]

‘Greenspin’ is a collaboration between poet Helen Moore and film-maker Howard Vause. Liberating and exposing the language of corporate advertising and ‘greenwashing’, the film references the creative practice of subvertising through the medium of satirical videopoetry, with an ante-narrative in the form of an ‘ad’ for the spoof Greenspin PR company, followed by the performance of the poem ‘From Greenwash, A User’s Manual’. The piece won 3rd prize in the Liberated Words Poetry Film Festival 2013.

If the imagination is to transcend and transform experience it has to question, to challenge, to conceive of alternatives. Eco-poet, Helen Moore, provides a glimpse of a change of thinking that points to us visioning a new ecological age… to be continued in a future issue.